At least one embodiment of the present invention relates to instrument tracking. More specifically, at least one embodiment of the present invention relates to instrument tracking on a scrolling series of images using a display apparatus.
Computer assisted surgical procedures including instrument navigation are known. One common component of such computer assisted surgical procedures includes instrument navigation as one method for transferring knowledge of the instrument position and/or orientation to the user or operator on an ongoing basis. Traditionally, such knowledge transfer may be accomplished by acquiring static data via an imaging modality that depicts a patient's anatomy (or portion thereof). The image of an instrument may be displayed on such static data. This display may include, for example, multiple 2D fluoroscopic images, multiple 2D slices through 3D data, a 3D surface model, or other data.
It should be appreciated that such prior known computer assisted surgical procedures are limited in the manner in which the instrument position information is perceived or understood by the user. For example, in a computer assisted surgical procedure using 2D or 3D-slice planar images, the user pieces together a mental picture of the patient anatomy from the limited and distributed information provided during the procedure.
In a computer assisted surgical procedure using a 3D model, for example, the user typically looks at one particular projection of the model at a time. Looking at one projection at a time may hide significant data (including parts of the instrument) or require the removal of significant sections of the model in order to view the desired anatomy, all of which generally requires significant user interaction and visualization skills to understand the provide instrument positional information.